“It is when I am weak that I am strong” [2 Cor 12:10].
Leonardo Boff, a renowned liberation theologian, is admirable in many respects. For years, he has been a champion for the rights of the poor and marginalized. He also has an unyielding insistence on a theology with two eyes, in which the gospel is seen in relation to the contemporary scene. On this point, he resonates well with Karl Barth in its fundamental inspiration. Barth, the most famous Protestant theologian of the twentieth century, had said that one must preach with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other. The Word of God achieves its divine mission, not in theoretical studies however erudite these may be, but when it speaks to people’s lives.
Professor Leonardo Boff
On May 19, a deadly political violence erupted on the streets of Bangkok. For the next 24 hours, the TV media showed Bangkok turned into a war zone. Dozens were killed, and many more wounded, and soon major buildings were up in flames, including Central World, the biggest shopping mall in Thailand. We could not but be struck by the rather shocking and quite sad turn of events in the political crisis in Thailand. Politics is always a complex reality and we have no interest to dwell into the complicated situation in Thailand. But a couple of things are striking.
The first thing that is striking is that a poverty time-bomb seemed somehow to have exploded, and that is always a valid point for ponder wherever we may be. Concerning the poor in Asia, Colin Mason, a veteran Western journalist, diplomat and Parliamentarian, had observed ten years earlier that “they don’t make news, nobody does anything for most of them, there is little enough indication that many even care.” Ironically, when they did make news this time in Thailand, they found themselves caught up in a complex political situation that cost so much bloodshed and broken hearts.
The second thing that is striking is the ugly consequence of the use of force, regardless of who is right or wrong. Once force is used on the general population by the authorities, something deep in that society changes permanently. The same thing happened at the military crackdown on students’ demonstration at Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. Force might “restore order”, but the society could never return to what the authorities envisioned prior to its use.
When a foreign professor of political science observed that “The situation is not good. You have a weak prime minister who has to resort to force”, the accuracy or otherwise of her observation does not interest us at all, but her linking weakness to the use of force provides a key for our ecclesial reflection. Calling it political weakness that which is reliant on military power to crash the people, especially poor simple people, is there something there which could awaken Christians to be more sensitive to, especially in regard to the use of power and authority within our church life? In every area of life and at every level in the faith community where power and authority is exercised, does that help to stir us to re-examine our mentality? Do we unthinkingly apply our legal power and authority, rather than approach people with the love of Christ?
In 1981, Leonardo Boff, who was then a Franciscan friar, wrote a book titled Church, Charism and Power which incurred the displeasure of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith at the Vatican. Amongst other things, Boff was accused of suggesting that Jesus did not determine the specific form and structure of the church, thus implying that other models besides the Roman Catholic one might be consistent with the gospel. But Boff was writing theology, and his aim was reform and renewal. Theological observers were clear that the Congregation’s main fear with Boff was not Marxist thinking (as it is with many other liberation theologians) but his central emphasis on the Holy Spirit, which could challenge the validity of present ecclesial structures. Ever fresh in observers’ minds was a comment by Cardinal Ernesto Ruffini during a debate at Vatican II when, after a number of speeches about the Holy Spirit, he responded, “We don’t need the guardianship of the Holy Spirit; we have the hierarchy.” In Boff’s case, a “silence” was imposed on him, which led him to accuse Vatican officials of practicing “religious terrorism” (terrorismo religioso). In other words, in the way the officials exercised their power, their behaviour, in Boff’s view, matched those of the terrorists. Which, of course, reminds us of the expression “spiritual gangsterism” originally coined by Pastor Ignotus in the Jesuit-run London-based magazine, The Tablet. To be sure, Ignotus applied that term to both the clergy and the laity alike, in other words, to anyone who uses power in the Church in a manner which is uncalled for and which causes a fall-out in relationships, a stifling of the Holy Spirit, and a loss of talents as people who have “no power” vote with their feet.
In 1992, under renewed threats of a second punitive action by authorities in Rome, this time to prevent Boff from participating in the Eco-92 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, it finally led him to leave the Franciscan religious order and the priestly ministry. As he declared his “promotion” to the state of the laity, he stated: “I changed trenches to continue the same fight.” He later told an interviewer: “I define myself more as a Franciscan Catholic than Roman Catholic. Never forget, St. Francis was a layman, he wasn’t a priest or part of the hierarchy.” For him, “the future of humanity and planet earth” was more important than the future of the institutionalized church.
At a deeper level, Boff is particularly inspiring in that he offers an alternative model of power for the church – a model based on the “service” of a living and changing church in which theological privileges are not concentrated in the few, but shared among the many.
Boff writes about his hope, which is “to nourish faith in the strength of the Spirit that is capable of awakening the dormant heart of the institutional Church, encouraging the living presence and the dangerous yet powerful memory of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.” His ecclesiology, then, is essentially a Spirit-ecclesiology. The Church founded on the Spirit must, in his view, be organized and run according to the principles of the Spirit. The Church must not be run on power-structures. Jesus was never about power or power-structures anyway. The Church being “a Sacrament of the Holy Spirit”, its organizing principle should be charisms rather than power.
In a 1977 work translated into English as Ecclesiogenesis, Boff once again questions the role of the institutional church, suggesting that it should co-exist with Christian Base Communities (elsewhere called BEC’s – basic ecclesial communities, or BCC’s – basic Christian communities), but should not rule over the communities. Once again, it is easy to see why the Vatican would see this as an attack on official institutional theology that Christ himself established the Roman Catholic Church and pre-ordained the power-structures. Boff followed up on Ecclesiogenesis with further publications that touched on the ordination of women as well as a married clergy. When the Vatican denied him permission to publish a subsequent work, Boff resigned from the priesthood. He told Newsweek International, “In 1992, they wanted to silence me again. Finally, I said no. The first time was an act of humility and I accepted. The second time was humiliation, and I couldn’t accept it.” He told Time reporter Richard N. Ostling: “The Vatican wants to centralize the church around the Pope and Rome. Liberation theology challenges that view, opting for a more decentralized church.” Boff’s resignation from the priesthood shocked the world, and he became an instant folk-hero, a man with much love and no official power, but a man much-loved and respected at home and abroad.
In more recent times, Boff has increasingly written on social ecology. Away from the previous antagonistic atmosphere, he seems more relaxed and at peace now. On that note, we conclude with a Boff-quote for coffee-corner dialogue:
- “Solidarity, compassion, caring, communion and loving. Such values and inner powers can lay the foundation of a new paradigm of civilization, the civilization of the humanity reunited in the Common House, on the Planet Earth… Our mission is to celebrate the greatness of Creation and connect it again to the Core where it came from and to where it will go, with care, lightness, joy, reverence and love.”
Copyright © Dr. Jeffrey & Angie Goh, Augustune 2010. All rights reserved.
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